Jesus returned from the Jordan River full of the Holy Spirit, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. 2 There he was tempted for forty days by the devil. He ate nothing during those days and afterward Jesus was starving. 3 The devil said to him, “Since you are God’s Son, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” 4 Jesus replied, “It’s written, People won’t live only by bread.”[a] 5 Next the devil led him to a high place and showed him in a single instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 The devil said, “I will give you this whole domain and the glory of all these kingdoms. It’s been entrusted to me and I can give it to anyone I want. 7 Therefore, if you will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 Jesus answered, “It’s written, You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”[b] 9 The devil brought him into Jerusalem and stood him at the highest point of the temple. He said to him, “Since you are God’s Son, throw yourself down from here; 10 for it’s written: He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you 11 and they will take you up in their hands so that you won’t hit your foot on a stone.[c]” 12 Jesus answered, “It’s been said, Don’t test the Lord your God.”[d] 13 After finishing every temptation, the devil departed from him until the next opportunity. (Common English Bible)
Ash Wednesday 2014
The
print on the outside of the envelope was impeccably legible: “To be opened by
Taylor Smith on April 13, 2023 only!”
But then underneath that, written in far tinier script, were the
words “unless said otherwise.”
Taylor
was a 12-year-old girl writing a letter to her 22-year-old self in the spring
of 2013, and by the end of this past January, she was dead, succumbing suddenly
to a bout of pneumonia. And her parents,
deciding that need did in fact dictate otherwise, opened up her letter. What they found amazed them, and this is just
one tiny excerpt of it:
I was in Cranks, Kentucky, for my first
mission trip. I’ve only been back for
six days! Speaking of, how’s your
relationship with God? Have you prayed,
worshiped, read the Bible, or gone to serve the Lord recently? If not, get up and do it now! I don’t care what point in our life we’re in
right now, do it! He was mocked, beaten,
tortured, and crucified for you! A
sinless man, who never did you or any other person wrong!
I
love that last line. Who never did you
or any other person wrong. And that’s a
winning streak that began as early as in the story we just heard, of Him
resisting the temptations of Lucifer.
I use
this story at the beginning of my Ash Wednesday sermon every year here (at
least, so far), because it is such a good one for setting the right balance in
mood and tenor for a service like this; I simply cannot ever not pass up a
repeat telling of this story. The
Reverend Lillian Daniel, an immensely talented pastor in the United Church of
Christ, writes in a book on pastoral ministry that she co-authored, called
“This Odd and Wondrous Calling,” about her experience as a pastoral intern at a
parish while in seminary. She writes:
I remember sitting at the back of the
sanctuary, reviewing my notes for my very first seminary-intern sermon. It was to be a mighty word from god that
would correct all the hypocrisy, greed, and faithlessness of the local church
that was, nonetheless, supporting my education as they had supported that of so
many others. As I mustered my courage to
sock it to them, I overheard one woman lean across her walker and whisper
loudly to her pew mate, “Ah, our new intern is preaching. I see it’s time for our annual
scolding.” Later, I would pastor a
church near that very divinity school, and hear for myself a few “annual
scoldings.”
Now,
we have no seminary intern here to deliver us our annual scoldings—you just
have me! And it would be all too easy to
dismiss Ash Wednesday as the day when the parish pastor administers said annual
scolding, but it would be exactly that: easy.
Too easy. Ash Wednesday is not
really about me scolding you so much as it is about taking on a sort of renewed
baptism: just as we hold baptism to be an outward sign of the inward reality of
a redeemed soul, so too do we hold ashes as an outward sign of the inward
reality of a repentant soul. Today is
about taking a day—not even a day, but merely an hour—of our time to
acknowledge our repentance. And in
contrast to our hour here together tonight, Jesus spends forty days, alone, in
the wilderness.
Well,
not entirely alone. He has a fasting
buddy who goes by many names—Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan, the Devil—that
guy. And said fasting buddy of course
turns out to be the worst accountability partner possible, because it isn’t
just that he tempts Jesus—it is that he does so repeatedly. You won’t be tempted by bread? Okay, how about by political power? Lather, rinse, and repeat. And that is often true to how temptation
often works today, too, right? Maybe the
first time you are able to say no, to resist, but bit by bit your resolve is
worn down until you give in to whatever or whoever is tempting you. Sure, you might feel comfortable not wanting
to do something with someone, be it drugs or drinking to excess or any number
of things, but the more you get asked, the more your “no” looks conspicuous.
And
so too, then, does Jesus’ “no” to Satan look more and more conspicuous—more and
more worthy of our attention—because it is repeated. And here’s the crucial thing: that “no” is not
simply isolated to these forty days.
Luke is very clear about how he ends this passage: “When the devil had
finished every test, he departed from (Jesus) until an opportune time.” That is perhaps the most difficult truth
about resisting temptation: it is never, ever over. It can always return, and it often will.
That
means it was never over for Jesus, either.
He probably faced temptations of varying sorts and types throughout His
ministry, and certainly so at Gethsemane, which is where some traditions say
Satan made his grand re-entrance to tempt Jesus with thoughts of backing out at
the 11th hour from what He knew must ultimately happen. Either way, though, this is partly what makes
Jesus so great: it wasn’t that temptation simply never followed Him around, but
that it did and He was able to overcome and transcend it.
But
there is something to the idea that Jesus was likewise tempted by Satan at
Gethsemane prior to His arrest and crucifixion.
For one, it bookmarks Jesus’ entire ministry: it begins and ends with
Jesus’ “no” to Satan. But both the
wilderness and Gethsemane also most likely represent Jesus at His weakest: when
He has gone so many days alone while fasting, and again when He is about to
die. And that is so, so often the
opportune moment for temptation to return.
One
of the most important parts, then, about resisting and overcoming temptation is
to recognize those moments when you yourself are at your weakest—whenever those
moments might be. After a big argument
with your spouse or significant other.
Maybe after being laid off from a job.
Or simply when your stress level has hit its maximum. Whenever those moments are, knowing that they
are the moments when you are weak is so, so vital. Acknowledging your own weakness in that
moment can paradoxically make you stronger—it can make you more able to see
through that moment of weakness and move on to the next. It’s a little like the twelve-step maxim of
recognizing your own powerlessness…only then can you begin to move forward.
Jesus,
though, is not powerless, and that is precisely the point of Satan’s
temptations. As New Testament scholar
Sharon Ringe puts it, “None of the tests proposed by the devil…would have had
Jesus do anything inherently harmful or evil, and in each case good could
result from what the devil proposed.” A
hungry appetite could be sated by bread.
A world given to Jesus’ authority would surely beat the authority of
Caesar or even our own politicians. And
angels catching Jesus out of thin air could have done wonders for the faith of
any who saw it happen.
So
what’s the big deal, then? It’s that we
would have to go to any such lengths to justify giving into temptation. It is a great rule of thumb for life in
general: the more you have to justify something to yourself, or to someone
else, or to God, the higher the chances are that you probably should do
whatever it is you are trying to justify.
But once we surrender our power to those things we ought not do, we are
cutting temptation’s power off at its very source: our ability to convince ourselves
that what we do is okay after all, that it is different for us, we’re special,
we’re not like all the other awful sinners out there.
Here’s
the thing, though: we are exactly like all the other awful sinners out
there. That’s the whole point of us needing
redemption. Maybe we think that some of
us need it more than others, but that does not mean that any one of us does not
need it. We all need it, period. And we can wait until what we think is the
opportune time to reach for that redemption, or we can reach for it here. Now.
A
little girl writes a letter to herself, and for her, the opportune time to open
it is ten years from now. But now, for
her grieving parents, the opportune time to open it has already arrived.
A
Messiah wanders out into the wilderness by Himself, and while for Him it might
be an opportune time to center Himself, it instead proves to be an opportune
time for the devil.
What,
then, in your life, is the opportune time?
When does temptation always seem to seek you out the most? I just talked about your weakest moments, but
those are by no means the only moments.
Evil sees all of our moments, and evil can rule over any of them that we
let it.
Until
the opportune time. Not for evil, but
for us. Until the opportune time when we
are able to stand firm, when we are able to be strong, when we are able to look
the devil in the eye as Jesus does and say to him, “Do not put me to the test!”
Until
the opportune time…when you can recognize your own frailty, your own weakness,
your own inability to always do as Jesus did, to “never do you or any other
person wrong,” and resolve that at least for this moment in time, you will be
Christ-like.
At
least for this moment in time, you will resist evil.
At
least for this moment in time, you will overcome temptation.
And
at least for this moment in time, you will transcend your own mere weakness.
That
is why you—me—all of us are here tonight.
We are here in search of our opportune time to be the Christians—the little
Christs—that God calls us to be. May
that opportune time come to you, and quickly, and often, for as long as you
continue to believe.
May it be so. Amen.
Rev.
Eric Atcheson
Longview,
Washington
March
5, 2014
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